


Mass

by greywash



Series: The Good Morrow [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Airports, Character Study, Desire, Experimental Fiction, Imported from Tumblr, Love, M/M, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:25:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: That bright-hazy blue-tinged chemical airport light: comforting, you think, nonsensically.





	Mass

**Author's Note:**

> So, first, a note: this and its companion piece, "[Taxonomy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885731)," were originally posted to Tumblr (this one on 21 November 2014, "Taxonomy" on 10 May 2015); while I normally don't like to post draft/first pass fiction to AO3— _especially_ for a universe that is as high-stakes to me as this one—I can't quite reconcile reposting them as "drafts" to DW, four years later, either. So: if, in my mega-edit yet to come on the remaining sections of _The Good Morrow_ , I make substantive edits to either of these works: **I will post the revisions as new, related works** , rather than editing these works directly. 
> 
> No warnings on this one. I am also replicating my Tumblr post meta content below, though, yes, I am aware that it does look a bit silly on the AO3.
> 
> _\- Gins 2018.12.06 13:41 PST_
> 
> * * *
> 
> lightly edited:
> 
>  **gins** : idk, maybe I should like  
>  **gins** : post it to tumblr and be like  
>  **gins** : “look, this slots in to this epic I’m writing you”  
>  **hbbo** : LOL  
>  **gins** : “which I’m not ready to post”  
>  **gins** : “but I’ll just leave this here for the time being if you want it OR NOT UP TO YOU”  
>  **gins** : and then maybe archive it later????  
>  **hbbo** : ahahahahahahaha  
>  **hbbo** : sounds good to me  
>  **gins** : ok I mean if you’re not telling me like  
>  **gins** : “oh god don’t do that!!”  
>  **hbbo** : it’s a wee little amuse-bouche  
>  **gins** : I’m totally  
>  **gins** : going to do that  
>  **gins** : ok  
>  **gins** : sweet  
> so anyway
> 
> i am sick in a ball under a blanket so i wrote u some experimental fiction
> 
> unbeta'ed, unbritpicked, unanythinged; i tried not to get my germs on it tho :D

**Friday, 19 October 2012, 07:22 EDT**  
**Montréal–Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport**  
**Gate 73**  


 

Ought to be able to, probably, with his coat up around his ears and from behind—but, anyway. Looks up (an excuse) doesn't he when you come 'round to face him; "Thanks." His hand on the strap of his laptop bag on his knee with his long fingers—he stirs his sugar into his coffee left-handed. Noted; sorted; filed. Could laugh at yourself, couldn't you. The air is stuffy and chemically refreshed; two lungs a dull muddled ache. "Ana's been calling you," he says, slides your mobile back; and that _look_. Turn. That bright-hazy blue-tinged chemical airport light: comforting, you think, nonsensically.

"Don't work for her anymore," you say, "do we?"; and he grimaces, and wrinkles up all his chins.

Cup. Tea, milk, pastry; he eyes it, and thus it is torn in half. Fingertips touch— swallowing "How's the knee?"

"It's fine."

"Yeah?" The pastry sticky and cinnamon, three bites. "That's good." No flavor whatsoever. Thick tongue-clinging oily weight.

He hunches, shredding, shredding. "I did ice it, you know." Pastry in a little snowfall heap under his hand.

"I know."

"Every night." Crumbs on his fingers. You think, quite deliberately, about putting them in your mouth; and then— "When I had a chance, as well," he is saying as startled recoil, "in between."

Breathless. _Right_ , you said, you are realizing; _right_.

"I do listen to you." He is watching; drop your hand are licking your starving thumb. He twists his lips: "Sometimes."

Rueful, you think, swallowing. Sweet. His (— _stop_ —) face—

"Are you not planning to eat that?" you say, changing the subject.

You nod. Stab red plastic stirrer, until he looks down, surprised. "I've not had breakfast, you know," focus: breakfast, his little blizzard of bakery, "and not all of us can live on—"

He turns away; you stop.

"The life of the mind," finally. Weak. Could kick yourself have done haven't you. "Well." Palms knees thighs knees thighs.

Breakfast, you think. Breakfast.

"Eat it or give it back, then," you say. "I'm starving."

He looks at you.

Ought to've expected head-on avalanche arctic white; you look concourse fluorescents plastic chairs table anywhere else and between you his fingers are held still: birds startled frozen shutter-caught; and you are made up of aching—working shutter-swinging throat. You could swallow and swallow, until it recedes—

Force. Self-discipline you say, "You should eat." A flight attendant for Air Canada on the concourse, in sensible shoes. "Unless you've broken the habit of a lifetime and had dinner, without me there to—"

—closing up. Phantom creeping clutching weight, on your—swallow, swallow-swallow; until you can breathe again. Cleared throat.

He eats the pastry, finally; in pieces, because that's what he's got.

Across the table from him in your chair as he eats your stomach loosens its knots. Across the table from you in his chair he keeps looking, and _looking_ : his ever-questioning unasking and oh what you want—unmeasured—

"So." Square stretch and straighten: have some spine, Watson; you've faced more brutal men. "The flight's at…"

"Eight," low rough voice which you know sounds-like thinking ", Gate 78," as you swallow, swallow; mouth empty. Shocking, somehow; your prickling-wet open insides and Cardiff palm jaw _tongue_ blue-hazed-yellow eyes reeking petrol streets. _Knees_ , you think, irrelevantly. He's hurt his knee again, hasn't he.

"Ah." Cringe, _stop_ : what deathless words you speak.

"I ought," he says, finally, "to buy you another."

Your hollow insides. Struggling; you think: _absurd_.

"By all means," you say, at last. Light. Passing over a serviette. Your hand, you marvel: perfectly steady. Inside: a crumpling-shivering-shriveling burning leaf. "Do keep me in the style I'm—oh, bollocks." Buzz edge of the table buzz; _don't_ fall. With your vast inflated unfamiliar hands, you fumble it back into your pocket; he wipes the crumbs from his fingers, and doesn't lick them off.

Coughing. Squint up into that yellowbluewhite light.

"Do you want another, truly?" he asks, very seriously. We are having a discussion about breakfast.

"Well." It is weightless, somehow; empty; your stomach is empty but for a half a pastry and a half-sip of scorching coffee and "I never say no to a rubbish Starbucks pastry," you say and inside a banging gong ", at the crack of dawn."

His not-laughing mouth and he stands, and the edge of his coat is in your hand.

Look up. Looking down. Those blueyellowwhite eyes. He's so tall, you realize. Again and again. Tall and heavy and awkward, you are realizing, again and again, and always when you touch him to wake him always he turns towards you, _always_ , you are realizing realizing again and again and again your heart pounding out of you again and again.

"Chicago." All alight.

"Yeah," he says.

"How long?"

Widening: his eyes. "Don't know." Shifting; and your hand—he inhales. "She—" breathless, his abdomen not-trembling trembling through— "she didn't say." cotton and plastic; expensive shirts backwards-buttons; and recall: he squirms, always, under your pounding-pounding allover—

"I mean—" flops like a gigantic ridiculous fish, _always_ , doesn't he. Under your hands.

"John?"

Swallow. And swallow. Somewhere the sun must be blinking into being through glass dulled in the pouring-bright artificial hazy-blue drowning airport light and "I mean, how long" you are clumsy ", until we land?"

"I." Sherlock inhaling. You feel it: your fingers just—just _below_ , and _outside_ , and— "a, a few hours." So far away. "Not long," he says.

Watch. Watching the path of his blood. His tissue thin-fair skin flooding splotchy and pink and the _weight_ , a late-season rose unfurling in his face in the base of your belly and you and your massive immovable wanting blooming into being locked door drawn blinds enclosed-darkness and the utter aching rightness of his mouth on your mouth—

"A few hours," you say and he says "Yes," clumsy and—

"Sit down;" and he falls out of your fingers as he pulls out the chair again, and sits.

He clears his throat. Motion everywhere all around, blue-white light. The start, you think, very carefully, of another commuter Friday.

"I thought you wanted another rubbish Starbucks pastry," he says, and is quiet; as alongside touching his shoes you rest your breezeblock feet.

(on the concourse lights blue-yellow-white buzzing and hum)

"She's got a bee in her bonnet," you say, steady steady, "about this business in Chicago."

"Yeah," quiet. Flushed faced; his knees pressing perfect to your knees and his wide heavy pale-hazed eyes fixed fast on your face.

Coffee: acrid. The scorched earth of your mouth; and through wool and denim heat seeping from him. Your stirrer, the table, tap-tap-tap: his hair isn't really true black, you know, but it looks it in this light.


End file.
